Category: Notes & Miscellany

So I was deep into a post about the unique women’s narrative in a match between Ivelisse and Sexy Star inspired by Ivelisse’s Twitter misadventures of late, because as you know, Ivelisse is my spirit animal, and I too am the baddest bitch in the building I am in. Also, I just can’t abide by the Twitter police all the time—this shit becomes its own form of exclusion and tyranny. But then Sexy Star had…

Greetings Spectacle Readers! I have several cool posts simmering, but I’m feeling inspired to keep up with the prolific J.J. McGee, who has brought this blog back to awesome with her bi-weekly Sami/Kevin history project! Instead of trying to force my next Punkrockbigmouth art crit piece to completion before it’s fully cooked this week, I’m sharing the first chapter of the novel I wrote for my MFA thesis well over a decade ago. I wasn’t ready to…

There are several cool posts on slow simmer right now for The Spectacle of Excess, so it’s relevant at this time that I ask: can you smell what the blog is cooking? But currently, I’m excited to share a 2016 retrospective essay I wrote for the Cubed Circle Newsletter. It was an honor to be invited to contribute to CCN’s Yearbook and I hope to do so again next year! There’s a whole list of cool contributions to…

I feel very, very conflicted about the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 11. I wanted Kenny Omega to win that belt for a few reasons: 1.) Look at this fucking guy. His “Cleaner” gimmick is ripped straight from Cobra, he came out to a Terminator intro, and he’s a sneering cartoon villain with a rubbery face. I’m into his whole thing. 2.) He’s one of the best wrestlers in the world, and his run in…

The image is a sign I made for Rusev when I went to a Smackdown in Phoenix last October. Sadly I forgot it in the trunk of my rental car, but at least I took a picture. It has been a wild month here at The Spectacle of Excess. I started this blog two years ago just so I could have a space to shoot my mouth off into the void about wrestling and Shakespeare and Roland Barthes and…

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed I’ve undergone a rather dramatic heel turn as of late. It started as a Kevin Steen, had it up to here with El Generico, mental breakdown sort of heel turn. I was all like this on Twitter: MOOD. pic.twitter.com/8ePjKeyoty — Andrea (@carnycorporate) April 23, 2016 You might have caught me tweeting mean comments about puppies, but my inner circle of DM hooligans witnessed a gif and…

I’ve slowed down my number of posts here the past couple weeks because I’m working on two art criticism posts I’ve been percolating for months and months — one on a portrait of Vince McMahon by Rob Schamberger, and the other about the eyes of wrestling in the art of Punkrockbigmouth. Really, the Vince McMahon one is a work of creative nonfiction that will also be about moral ambiguity and my cowboy grandfather. I’m also…

This Week’s Notes: Regular readers of this blog will know that I am generally more sympathetic than not toward John Cena’s plight. But nights like tonight he just strikes me as smarmy. I find myself wanting him to learn his lesson, get his ass handed to him for his hubris, which becomes more and more apparent every show. It is very interesting that he is resisting ceding the alpha role to crowd darling Dean Ambrose.…

JBL was in rare form tonight. Some highlights: “He comes out with a dancing cheese burger, and there’s nothing wrong with him?” “The bunny’s taken out The Gator! Titus used to be tough!” “How does a referee ignore a bunny hopping across the ring?” “A flying bunny!” And the rest of my Evening Notes: #Bunnymania was an satire on the legendary blind spots of wrestling’s referees. Adam Rose has reintroduced a Fellini-esque element into…

The folks at New Pop Lit added an interview with me as an afterword, if you will, to my short story about indy wrestling, “The Unshakable Kayfabe of Tommy Rage”. An interview with little old me! If you’re interested in wrestling, Russian literature, MFA programs and cowboys neglected by history, take a look.

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"In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible." -Roland Barthes